Then called ValuJet, the airline was written off by Wall Street as another doomed discounter like People Express.
Geico went from a fringe discounter to a major presence in the market.
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Heroic indeed is his belief in the resilience and robustness of the stock market as a discounter of information.
Schwab's retreat was followed by the defection of Toronto Dominion's discounter TD Waterhouse.
The full-cost brokerage firms used to dismiss Charles Schwab as a bargain-rack discounter they did not need to compete with.
Another discounter to keep an eye on: America West Holdings (nyse: AWA - news - people ).
And it takes a key asset of Best Buy to a well-trafficked discounter when its own big-box stores are undershopped.
The company boosted existing supply deals with Sainsbury's, discounter Netto and the Martin McColl Group, the UK's biggest chain of newsagents.
The knock against Cummings is that he's no innovator, just a discounter.
Webster aims to get business travelers by making EasyJet the "quality" discounter, with new planes going to convenient airports on 30 routes.
But sales are still collapsing despite a planned welcome-back sale in June while the competition, principally rival mega-discounter Wal-Mart, is stretching its lead.
One, the stock market is the discounter of all known information.
Cheap chic discounter Target and upscale department store Neiman Marcus are teaming up on a fashion, home and accessories collection that will be sold at both chains.
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Times are tough for retailers, but the discounter has increased earnings in 14 of its last 16 quarters, and Barrow says it will handle a slowdown well.
In 2010, when online e-tailer Shangpin switched from being just a me-too discounter of end of season fashions to limited time, flash sales, revenue grew 20 times year-over-year.
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Discounter Target (TGT) sales were up only 2%, missing estimates.
That makes many buyers' agents steer their clients elsewhere either in solidarity with full-service brokers or because they fear a discounter will leave them with the lion's share of the work.
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Such a commitment can be effective because, whereas the department store can aim its price cuts at bargain-hunters, the discounter cannot offer price cuts to impatient buyers without offering discounts to all its clients.
Still, a slightly larger proportion of shoppers at the discounter, known to cater to more cash-strapped, lower income households, plans to spend more for the upcoming holiday season (9.5%) compared to JC Penney shoppers (7.4%).
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Shares of the aging discounter are essentially unchanged from where they were five years ago, meaning that an investor who bought the stock in July 2002 has made an approximate 1% return, the rate of Wal-Mart's dividend yield.
Analyst Martin Borghetto at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter notes that discount airlines in Europe still have only 3.7% of the intracontinental traffic, compared with 16.7% in the U.S., but he prefers the bigger and older European discounter, Ryanair.
As Forbes reported last year, Walmart, the mighty discounter, was sued by employees because it offered just 10 mutual funds, many of them middling performers and most charging the same fees that the employees would have paid buying them individually.
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In a similar vein, well run foreign retailers such as Tesco and Aldi, a German hard discounter, may find their expansion in America goes better now that so many local rivals are feeling pain (the two firms are fighting a price war against each other at home in Europe).
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